The voice of the Pats for 36 years was battling for his life last spring. He was in a medically induced coma for three weeks. He was given the last rites of the Catholic Church three times. For two months, the only part of his body that he could move was his right arm.

This Sunday, Santos will be right back where he usually is, in the broadcast booth at Gillette Stadium for what will be his final regular-season contest, the 757th Pats game he has worked. The fact that the end of his career is coinciding with the Christmas season makes what is happening this week even more meaningful, so much so that he invoked one of the great holiday movies to describe how he feels.

“It’s been a wonderful life,” he said. “It’s enabled me to have a job, raise my family and now see my grandchildren.

“It’s been a lot of fun. I will miss it. I know I will, especially at the beginning of [next] season … But it’s time to step aside and turn it over to the new generation. The fact that I am going out on my own terms, that no one is pushing me out the door, makes me feel good.”

The Red Sox had Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin. The Celtics had Johnny Most and the Bruins had Bob Wilson. Santos is the last of his generation who has been identified as the voice of his team to end his career.

He belongs with the greats.

The 72-year-old grew up in Fairhaven, Mass., and has worked for numerous teams in the region. He was the voice of Providence College for four years, where he worked with Bob Dick. He did some broadcasting for Brown. He was the television voice of the Celtics.

“From the time I was 10 or 11, I wanted to be a play-by-play broadcaster,” he said. “At that time not everyone had a TV. Fans listened to the game on the radio. I decided at a young age that what I wanted to do. It sounded like a great way to make a living. It sounds like a lot of fun. And it has been. It’s never been a job, especially with the Patriots. It’s been an honor.”

He did a lot of other work, too, including morning sports reports on WBZ radio for 38 years before retiring in 2009. Some of his fondest memories are from the early days doing PC basketball.

“I grew up a Friars fan,” he said. “They were the closest team to us in Fairhaven. When I did the games, Gary Walters and then Joe Mullaney were the coaches. It wasn’t the best of time for the Friars. The game I remember most was in the Big East Tournament when Ricky Tucker made a shot from the right baseline to upset Boston College. We were all so happy.”

Forty-six years ago, he landed the Patriots job, and everything changed. It was to become his life’s calling. His booming voice has worked six Super Bowls and 15 of the team’s 19 playoffs runs. He is tied with Eagles broadcaster Merrill Reese for longest running NFL broadcaster, although Santos started 10 years earlier. He had a hiatus in the 1980s when the team changed its radio rights to another station.

“Gil is so good to work with. He’s such a nice guy,” said Marc Cappello, the producer of Patriots games for 98.5 The Sports Hub. “The thing about him is that he’s always so prepared.”

Santos is also well-traveled.

“Just the other day, my granddaughter and I calculated that just for Patriots games I’ve traveled 1.3 million miles. When you add in everything else, the Celtics, PC, Brown, Penn State and everything it’s 1.5 million miles. I’ve had more than my 15 minutes in the sun. That’s enough. I can walk into the sunset and let somebody else have the fun,” Santos said.

Retirement from a job he has loved so much would be emotional under any circumstances, but it is all the more so because of what he has been through in the last 10 months.

“At the end of last season, just after we got back from the Super Bowl, my wife and I went out to dinner. I got sick,” he said. “That went away, but my wife, Roberta, who is a nurse, kept telling me I didn’t look right. She wanted me to go to the emergency room. I kept insisting everything was fine. I had gone through a physical in December, and everything was fine.”

“We went to breakfast one morning, and I came out of the restroom and started staggering,” he said. An ambulance was called.

“I remember getting in the ambulance. I remember going down Route 44, but I don’t remember getting to the hospital. I was there three weeks. I don’t remember one second. They put me in a medically induced coma. I had double pneumonia in one lung, single pneumonia in the other. I had COPD, obstructed pulmonary disease.

“Things were pretty bad in those three weeks. They gave me the last rites of the Catholic Church three different times, but I kept fending Him off.

“The next thing I remember from being in the ambulance was when I woke up and I’m looking around in this room. My wife is sitting next to me and I said, ‘Where am I? What happened?’ She went through the whole litany of what happened.”

He had been transferred from Morton Hospital, where he was on a ventilator for three weeks, to New England Sinai Rehab Hospital where he was for another month. For a long time, the only thing he could move was his right arm. He could not even feed himself.

“They transferred me to Life Care Nursing Home in West Bridgewater, which is excellent at helping people recover,” he said. “When I got there, I could only move right arm. I couldn’t move other arm or my legs. Six weeks later, I walked out.”

“I started walking around the around for about a month, all through the house,” he said. “By then the weather was nice and I was able to walk outside. After about a month, I didn’t need the walker anymore.”

His employers stood by him and gave him the choice of deciding what to do.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to come back,” he said. “About the middle of June I felt good enough to say I would come back for one more year.”

He walks slower now than he used to. But, when he moves behind the microphone, he remains the same powerful voice who has entertained an entire generation of Patriots fans. He hopes the season will continue into February. But he is at peace with the fact that when it ends, his career does, too.

“I’ve lost a little off the fastball, but I don’t think too much,” he said. “I’ve loved it, but it’s time to step aside.”